


Don't Leave Me Behind

by Val_Creative



Series: Warlock & His Dollophead [6]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Humor, M/M, Magic Revealed, Underage - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:46:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1579022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He promised to keep Merlin’s secret. It was theirs—and no one else’s. Until, one day, a snowy white owl perched outside Merlin’s bedroom window, hooting for attention. "It’s a letter," he told Arthur, eleven-year-old cheeks beaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Leave Me Behind

**Author's Note:**

> (A very special thank you to my friends on Skype who encouraged this on, even when I was whining, and The Merlin Family as well as The Warlock and His King Network on Tumblr for being a wonderfully excitable bunch ❤ ❤ ❤ )  
> Credit to [Andre](http://andrewonders.tumblr.com) for helping me figure out what I wanted!~
> 
> Day #6: "clothed getting off"

*

 

Ever since Merlin was born, he told Arthur his Mum believed he was special.

And of course that's _silly_ —that's what all Mums said about their kids, or so Arthur had been led to believe with his friends.

He couldn't ask his Mum if that was true. Ygraine de Bois had been dead since Arthur was born.

Guess that may have not made him special…

At age eight, however, it became apparent to both of them just how special Merlin was. But it had to do with their favorite hiding place.

Namely, a spindly oak tree at the bottom of a hill, proudly dotted between the field connecting the town line. Merlin lived on the outskirts with cheap housing for rent; Arthur lived surrounded by private woods in a French-renaissance mansion with seven giant bathrooms and a dumb waiter.

Merlin often took to pouting frustrated, about Arthur childish teasing, about not knowing what a _dumb waiter_ was. (Arthur didn't know what it was either—but he wasn't about to let _Merlin Emrys_ get the upper-hand.)

The distance in the sunny barley field wouldn't hinder either of them.

Both eight-year-olds had been idly flipping pences against the bark of the oak tree when Merlin stopped what he was doing, closing his little fingers around his coin.

He gasped softly, opening his hand.

" _Arthur!_ " Merlin's face crinkled into an excited grin as he looked down.

Instead of a rusty-colored coin in Merlin's palm, a tiny flower had begun to appear flourishing with a long stem and pale blue petals.

"Whoaah," Arthur breathed out, grabbing Merlin's hand to inspect. Instead of feeling panic at the unknown, his boy-features awed. "How did you do that? Was that a magic trick?" Arthur then gave the other boy a suspicious look. Merlin was learning magic tricks and not teaching _him_?

Hrm, maybe Merlin's father had been a magician. Merlin didn't know anything about his father. Or maybe he had been part elephant too.

Arthur snickered at his own joke, watching as Merlin's ears blushed.

"I—I don't know!" the other boy said. "I just thought about it and…"

Mouth creasing, Arthur squeezed his hand around his own coin, eyes furiously shut. _Make a flower. Make. a. flower._

_No. Make a ice cream sundae._

He opened his hand, disappointed to see the same rusty-colored coin.

"How come you can do it and I _can't_?"

Merlin shrugged, lips pressing into a smashed line.

He plucked up the pale blue flower, holding it out to Arthur and smiling enormously. "You can have it if you want," he murmured.

Arthur's voice went squeaky high-pitched, as he said indignantly, stomping a foot on the ground, "You don't give your friends a _flower_!"

Merlin looked confused.

"Then what do I give you?"

"A—A," he sputtered. "A _hug_! Not a _flower_ , Merlin! That's stupid!"

"Okay!" Merlin crowed out, tackling Arthur onto his side to the grass, laughing when Arthur laughed and wrestled him onto his back.

 

*

 

He promised to keep Merlin's secret. It was _theirs_ —and no one else's.

Until, one day, a snowy white owl perched outside Merlin's bedroom window, hooting for attention.

"It's a letter," he told Arthur, eleven-year-old cheeks beaming. Arthur scrutinized the loopy print. "It's a school for _magic_! I really have magic!"

"Oh," Arthur said flatly. His chest felt really itchy and hot.

Merlin was nearly bouncing in place, hands reaching to grasp a naked, spindly branch overhead. "Mum said not to tell anyone but it's gonna start soon! What if you get one, too?"

Arthur's breath caught at the possibility, chest tight. Him?

"I want you to come with me, Arthur. _Please_!"

 

*

 

When Arthur ran home, he glued himself to a window.

At the slightest glimpse of a flying bird, Arthur jumped up from where he was with knees burrowed to pillows, nearly barreling to the mail-slot.

"Stop _scuffing_ up my floors—Morgause just cleaned!" came a yell.

His step-mother gave him a deeply seething look, clapping her hands loudly in Arthur's direction as if he were no more than a pesky animal to be subdued. _They aren't yours_ , Arthur thought stubbornly to himself. _It's Father's house—MY house._

Catrina Tregor huffed unladylike through her nose, as he ducked away.

"Your son can be rather dreadful about his manners, Uther," she said, her delicate nose held high, puffing up her chest importantly. It reminded Arthur of one of those big hairy gorillas at the zoo, like perhaps she was about to pound her manicured fist into her breast and leap over the dinner table, screeching. "Did you not _hear_ a word I just said to you?"

"Yes, of course, pet," Uther responded with cold stoicism, not sparing a look over his newspaper.

She huffed again, tossing her hands up. But this time her rouged lips curled spitefully in a vile grin.

"If you let this sort of rampant, _delinquent_ behavior continue, the next thing you know he'll be off to St. Brutus's Secure—"

Uther's fist slammed down, rattling silverware. Arthur flinched at the bay window, eyes firmly on the burning orange horizon. "I will die before _allowing_ our family name to be dragged through the mud—"

"Oh, Uther dear," she cooed, stroking his arm. "It need not come to that."

Arthur gritted his teeth together, slapping his hands over his ears and swallowing down the lump in his throat. He hunched in, facing his back to everyone, staring with desperate hope to the clouds blackening. A great rumble of thunder sank his hopes. Droplets of water pattering to the glass.

He stared, and stared, until his eyes went cross-eyed.

"Arthur?" Morgause patted the little boy's shoulder, noticing his sleepy head-tilt. "Come on, let's put you to bed, sweetheart," the nanny whispered.

He liked Morgause. She had pretty brown eyes and tickley hair and sang him lullabies when Arthur was sick. She also told him stories about Mum. They had been very good friends before Arthur was born.

Arthur dutifully took her hand, biting on his quivering lip in silence and aiming the bay window with one last glance. Maybe tomorrow…

 

*

 

During the next few summers, instead of spending it waiting at the bottom of the hill, Arthur ventured out of the town limits with his mates.

He remembered a weekend at thirteen with his lips roaming some girl's tet, high as fucking anything, sore and likely a bit hungover.

Before Arthur knew it, he had blinked into the eye of a tomorrow.

And he was yelling at Merlin, grimacing and swaying, a copious amount of bourbon in his fifteen-year-old veins. "You're a _freak_ , Emrys!"

Merlin's hands stiffened onto his textbook: _Reviewing Summoning Charms_. He didn't move from leaning against the old oak tree.

"And you're pissed off your arse," he said blandly. Thin rays of light haloed Merlin's head when it bowed and his dark locks looked criminally soft—Arthur's fingers twitched at his sides. "Go home, Arthur."

" _Everyone_ ," Arthur wiped at his alcohol-sticky mouth, and then wiped at his eyes stinging and hurting. "Everyone k-knows it," he muttered.

"I don't care what anyone else thinks, have you ever thought of that?"

The familiar twinge of loneliness clutched at Arthur's heart.

"It's unnatural."

"I was _born_ like this. That's the most natural reason I've ever thought of." Merlin's voice rose, and finally, _finally_ …he was getting a decent reaction.

Arthur egged him on.

"Sorcerers go to hell," he said, fighting off slurring his words. "You pra'tice magic, and you won't go to he'ven—so."

"Oh, right. Because you're so _concerned_ about my well-being, you prick," Merlin said, a nasty expression twisting his face. He slammed his book shut, throwing it. "You've _ignored_ every letter I sent you. Avoided me this long and for what? You couldn't stand the fact I was different from you?"

Merlin's expression fell away, realization and disgust clouding it.

"Or was it because you were jealous?" he asked, slowly. Arthur's hands shook.

"Arthur de Bois not being _better_ than someone else, oh what a goddamn travesty—"

"Just shut up, Merlin," he whispered, face growing hot under the collar.

Merlin's nostrils flared as he got up, squaring off with Arthur, his voice low, "I fucking _tried_. At least I can sleep with my conscious." Merlin grinned, but it was anything but full of the radiant warmth Arthur knew. "What are you sleeping with these days…? Does it smell like your own bullshit?"

With a hard jerk of multistriped jumper, Arthur had the other teenager pressed to the oak tree, a leg to Merlin's thigh and solid column of forearm digging to Merlin's neck.

Something dark flashed in the blue of Merlin's eyes, like _instinct_.

"Go on then," Arthur said, taunting. But for all his anger, he felt it drain slowly out of him. Leaving the emptiness. "Why don't you teach me a lesson? You know you want to use your _special_ magic against me, don't you?"

The mouth in front of him an unyielding line, and Arthur wanted to push, slot their lips together, open apart and soften Merlin's lips.

"No, I don't." Merlin admitted, maintaining the air of _control_ even with the potential of a choked-off air supply. "Whatever twisted notion you have in your head… I'm not a monster."

The amazement coming off Merlin, from his tone, loosened Arthur's grip.

"I can do things I never imagined before was possible, Arthur. I can replicate a healing potion. I can transmute an object into a beetle. I can _fight_ monsters," he insisted, eyes widening. "But I… I can't let go of how I think of you." Merlin searched him, trying to follow Arthur's eyes dodging him.

"I wanted to do all that _with_ you. You kept my secret, you—"

The rest of his sentence muffled against a fleeting kiss.

"You really do need to learn to shut up, Merlin," he murmured knowingly, lips tracing heat and sensitive touch to Merlin's. Arthur's hands bracketing his face.

Merlin chuckled into another kiss, somewhat nervous, and slipped his fingers up Arthur's jacket, grinding back to the press of their bodies.

He thought about the taste of stale cigarettes, about flesh and sweat, about pale blue flowers growing from Merlin's hands—breathing faster, quicker. Arthur licked the jut of Merlin's throat, under an earlobe, aggressively pushing his hand to feel the delicious spasm of Merlin coming inside his trousers. Just from rutting back into him.

Arthur's ears picked up the deep, filthy noise, of Merlin letting himself go. He held him upright and to the tree.

Fingers tousled in Merlin's ebony hair.

Much, much _softer_ than he imagined.

 _Brilliant, you're brilliant, sorry, sorry, m'sorry_ —and the boy he had loved and hurt and ached for longer than Arthur knew—Merlin snorted gently with his cheek to Arthur's shoulder.

"Now who needs to shut up," he replied, fondly.

 

*

 

Arthur found himself caving after a long miserable holiday. He marched himself across the barley field to Merlin's house, politely questioning a bemused Hunith on how the wizarding mailing system actually existed.

 

*

 

At King's Cross Station, Merlin claimed the entrance to Platform Nine and Three Quarters was a brick wall ("but you wouldn't be able to spot it with a thicker head like yours, clotpole")… and Arthur half-tuned him out, smiling, hands entwining to Merlin's green and silver uniform-tie.

 

*

 

 


End file.
